Remains
by mecaka
Summary: All that remains of Rose Tyler in this universe is in the memories of those who knew her. A story of the Doctor sharing a bit more with his companions than he used to. Now complete!
1. Martha

**AN: Hi. This is my first Doctor Who story. It's sort of a practice piece for another story I'm in the process of writing (re: trying to stop procrastinating on). To those of you wishing my newest post would be an update... Sorry. I've had this bit done for a while. Decided it would work better as a four-shot instead of a giant one-shot. Because the third bit is taking a lot of work...**

**Anyways, please enjoy. And I'll try to post the rest of this soon.**

The Doctor had been exhausted after dealing with the Family. He was more tired than she'd ever seen him, a fact that he had proven by sending himself to bed. She'd never actually seen him go to his bedroom before. She didn't even know where it usually was.

She had been really surprised when he walked towards an empty stretch of hall right outside the console room. Just as he reached it, two doors appeared, the one on the right swinging inward.

Frowning, Martha walked up to the other door. It was so close to the Doctor's, they were almost touching, almost a set of double doors leading to one room. There was just the barest bit of wall and their respective door frames separating them. She briefly touched that bit of wall, and was rocked by the wave of grief rolling from it; her hand snapped back to her chest of its own accord.

Her eyes traced over the seam of the Doctor's door, making sure it was shut tight, then flicked to the door on the left. She grasped the handle, and gently turned it. She began to turn harder when it didn't budge, and had to resist the urge to kick the door when she realized it was locked. She sighed, and leaned her head against it, fighting the urge to lean away as she was assaulted with a variety of emotions: sadness, joy, peace, and deep sense of longing and loss.

After a moment of allowing those feelings to roll through her, she turned and made her way to the kitchen. A nice cuppa would do her a world of good. Then it was off to find her bedroom, which never stayed in the same place, and the TARDIS seemed to be actively hiding from her.

.

.

.

The next morning—well, time was always pretty weird on the TARDIS, but Martha considered that the few hours after she woke up were "morning"—the new doors were still in their place. Worried for the Time Lord who never seemed to need sleep, she walked up to the door on the right and knocked. The door swung inwards to reveal an obviously male bedroom: deep blue walls and dark-stained woods for the furniture. Bits of "alien" technology were spread all over the place. The Doctor's coat was hanging on the open door of the closet, and his trainers sat on the floor in front of an easy chair. She glanced around the room, looking for the man himself, but didn't see him in the room. Utterly confused, Martha turned back through the doorway, crying out as she crashed right into the Doctor's chest as he exited the door to the left. He had been pulling it shut behind him, and through the small gap she glimpsed a bright room with pink walls. The edge of a shelf lined with framed photographs could be seen on the far wall, and a dresser blocked Martha's view of the corner.

She pulled her eyes from the room and cast them up into the brown ones boring down into her.

"What were you doing in there, Martha?"

"Sorry, I—I was just… I was worried. I've never seen you sleep _at all_ before, and I saw you come in here 10 hours ago. Just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I wasn't sleeping."

"Oh… Why's the wall sad?" She felt a little crazy asking such a strange question, but the Doctor insisted that the ship had a telepathic connection with him. Perhaps it was empathic as well.

His eyebrows drew together, and his gaze shifted to the sliver of wall peeking out from between the door frames. "Because it's just like the one at Canary Wharf."

"What d'ya mean?"

The look he gave her was one of a man broken beyond repair, of a man who had lost everything he'd ever given importance to, of a man who been shattered by the emptiness surrounding him. "Do you remember how I said Rose and I were 'together'?" he asked. After she nodded, he continued, "Well, we were at Canary Wharf… And we were trying to stop… everything. I opened up a portal to this place. Well, I say 'place', I mean the Void, which is this empty space where there's nothing. The Dalek and Cybermen, they had all been in there, and could be sucked back in using the portal. But Rose and I had briefly crossed through the Void—by accident, mind you—and we could get pulled in to. She—she fell. But a man from a parallel universe jumped back across at the last second and caught her, and then jumped again before the breach closed."

He paused, taking a deep breath, like he was trying to hold himself together.

"The wall where the breach was… I could _feel_ her on the other side of it. I _hate_ that wall, because it kept us separated. Just like this one did."

"So that's her room, then?"

The Doctor nodded, blinking rapidly for a moment.

"I'm sorry."

He just stared at her for a moment. "Yeah, so am I."

**Oh, and reviews are love! :)**


	2. Donna

**So, I decided to go ahead and give this to you guys because... Well, this is only like 300-something words, and I was a little upset that so many other stories have been posted/updated that this was now at the bottom of the third page. It only took 6 hours! That's crazy by the standards I'm usually working with... Anyways, I'm tired, this is really short.**

Donna considered herself the sort of person to get straight to the point.

"So, the last time we talked you said your friend's name was Rose."

"Yep," the Doctor replied, popping the 'p' loudly.

"How long was she with you?"

"Oh, two years, give or take."

"What happened to—"

"You know where I should take you? There's this lovely little place in Rome… oh, around the time that Pompeii happened. _Lovely_ little place. I think it's where pizza was invented."

"Doctor."

"Or I could take you to the New Roman Empire, a couple hundred years in the future."

_Doc_tor."

"Or—oh, Donna you'll love this one!—there's this great asteroid bazaar on the other side of the Milky Way. They have the best ice cream in the universe."

_Doctor!_"

He was facing the console, and had refused to meet her gaze since she had brought up Rose. With her last exclamation, he had gripped the edge, and was bending towards it. He took a shaky breath, and Donna wondered if she had pushed to far.

"Look, I'm sorry, we don't have t—"

"She got stuck in a parallel universe."

That gave Donna pause. "Oh."

"Yeah…" he replied, lightly scuffing his shoe along the floor.

"What was she like?"

He turned to her then. "She was… brilliant. She was always noticing things that I didn't. Like when we visited London in the 50's and there were way too many TV aerials. Or when we went to the 2012 Olympics and she saw this woman who was afraid of her own daughter. She was _always_ seeing stuff like that." His eyes misted slightly, and his eyes drifted up until he was staring at nothing in particular. Donna could tell he was lost in the memories. "And she was _so_ kind. She made a Dalek want to be a better person, held her dad's hand as he died, and kept me from forcing people into things." His smile fell a little, as he obviously reached a few worse memories."I… changed after the first year. I was a completely different man, overnight, and she _stayed. _I thought that she would leave, but she _stayed_. She was… _everything_. So human, and so beautifully curious and compassionate."

"She sounds, fantastic, Doctor."

He smiled a little, laughing slightly, like it was an inside joke. "Yeah, she was."

**Reviews are love! (Thanks again to the two lovely readers who left reviews on the last chapter!)**


	3. Amy and Rory (1)

**So, I was going to upload this 6 hours ago... But I had a class, and I had to get food. And then I had work study. And then I had actual studying. And then I needed more food.**

**Anyways, here is the third chapter!**

Amy was sitting upside down on a couch in the library, while Rory sat (right-side up) next to her, reading aloud from some historical fiction novel written in the 27th century. They were waiting on the Doctor to finish shopping ("bartering" was the word he had used) for parts for the TARDIS, so he could take them to a pleasure planet in the Draxxel Quadrant. He wanted to make up missing Rio by taking them to a planet that human colonists had devoted to Carnival.

Amy was swinging her feet up and down over the back of the sofa, examining a bit of chipped polish on her thumb nail, debating whether the chip warranted completely redoing the polish, and what color she should paint them next. She glanced at the bookshelf against the wall opposite the couch, and was surprised to see a line of photographs she'd never noticed before.

"Rory?" she asked, waiting til she had his full attention from the novel. "You ever seen those pictures before?"

Rory looked up. "No. The TARDIS must have put them there."

"But where would she have gotten them from? The Doctor doesn't seem to like pictures much," she responded, thinking back to all the times Amy had tried to get a few snapshots with him. "And the frames are a little… _feminine;_ I mean, pink? That's not really his style."

Swinging her feet around, Amy toppled from the couch and pulled herself up. She walked over to the shelf, intent on examining the pictures a little more closely.

She saw that nearly every picture had a young blonde present and that about half had her with a large-eared man in a leather jacket, and the other half with a skinny, younger man in a brown suit. In some of the pictures, a handsome man with dark hair was with the blonde and the leather-wearing man. In all of the pictures, everyone present was smiling; more often than not, they were caught mid-laugh.

"Funny, the Doctor isn't in _any_ of these pictures… I wonder who this girl is?"

Rory stood and came up next to her. "Maybe it was someone who used to travel with him. And one of these guys could be the Doctor before this regeneration, couldn't it?"

"I guess…" She examined the brown-haired one, unable to help noticing that his clothing looked familiar… "But, the Doctor doesn't smile like this. It's weird. And look at this one's suit, doesn't it look—"

Suddenly the Doctor's voice filtered through the doorway. "_Ponds_! Where have you got off to? I found this _beau_tiful part for the TARDIS… It should help me la— it should keep the TARDIS from changing the coordinates so often. Want to give it a go?"

And then the library door opened, and the Doctor stepped into the room. He had his usual goofy grin in place, and was waving around some sort of techno-bit like it was candy on Easter morning. He had obviously intended to keep babbling, but had stopped when he noticed the shelf of picture frames.

Immediately, his whole face darkened, like he'd just found a Dalek hiding in his ship.

"Where did you get _those_?"

Amy blinked, shocked by the harsh tone. "We… They were… I just noticed them sitting here. We thought the TARDIS had put them out."

His face turned to the ceiling. "I thought I told you: keep _her _things in _her_ room where they belong!" He shouted this as if it was an ongoing issue, something he'd been fighting with the sentient ship about for… weeks? Months?

Amy glanced back at Rory, who looked just as confused as she felt. "Her? Who's 'her'?"

The Doctor's eyes shot back to her face. They flitted briefly to the pictures, then back to her. "No one. Doesn't matter."

"I think it does matter, Raggedy Man," Amy replied stubbornly. As she said this, Rory gasped.

"_The suit!_ The raggedy suit, it's this one!" Amy turned her head to see Rory pick up one of the pictures and point to the pinstriped man. "See, it looks just like the one he was wearing when he w—"

The Doctor stepped forward then, snatching the photograph from her husband, and then stacking up all the pictures into his arms, before stomping out of the library and down the hall. Sparing another glance at Rory, Amy ran after her best friend, intent on discovering what was wrong.

**There will be another part to Amy and Rory's story. It was getting kind of long in comparison to the others. I'm also planning on doing at least one for Clara. So there will be at least five parts to this (not four, like I said in chapter 1)**


	4. Amy and Rory (2)

**Wow. I've been (more or less) consistent in updating. 2 chapters the first day, 1 the second, and 1 the fourth. This is almost as good as I was doing when I wrote my first story. Which started 14 months ago and only has 9 chapters. You should feel VERY special.**

**Anyways, this one is shorter, but the ending place worked well for me. (And I don't really have anything else written yet... So...) But it's still longer than Donna's chapter...**

**Also, apparently Amy and Rory get 3 parts. Clara is probably going to end up with at least 2. So this really spiraling out of control.**

**ANYWAYS. On with the story.**

Amy hurried down the hallway, desperately trying to keep the Doctor in sight. He, of course, had an advantage due to his superior knowledge of the ship, and the ability to make the ship change the corridors and doorways behind him. Eventually, she turned a corner, and nearly ran into wall. It was a dead end. She'd lost him.

She turned to go back to her husband in the library, and was surprised to see an inviting white door cracked open at the other end of the hall. A cheery light was spilling out onto the metal floor. She caught a glimpse of pink walls and cream carpet.

Silently, she slipped down to the room and poked her head through the door. She was shocked by the sight that met her eyes.

The room contained an unmade bed, a vanity covered in cosmetics—some of them even open—and a dresser with all sorts of knick-knacks and picture frames and souvenirs crammed onto the surface. One of the drawers was open, revealing a stack of shirts messily shoved inside. There was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, and shoes everywhere. An open magazine lay on one of the pillows on the bed, and the bedside lamp was on. In the back corner of the room, there was a door revealing an equally messy en suite.

The most shocking thing of all, however, was the Doctor himself, carefully arranging the forbidden pictures on a shelf. There were even more on this shelf than had been in the library, and the care in which the Doctor ordered them revealed his care for whoever's room this had been. _It's like he's keeping it ready for her_, she thought to herself.

By now, Amy had stepped fully into the room, and was taking in the sight of this strange, sentimental side of her best friend. She had never seen anything like. Eventually, though, he was through, and he spun on his heel, obviously ready to leave the room. She wasn't ready for the sudden move, so she was immediately spotted by the Time Lord.

His eyes widened. "Amy? But I… But there was a wall! I made sure of it!"

"Well, obviously the TARDIS had different plans, eh?"

He stood there, lost for words.

"You going to tell me who this girl was then?"

His eyes kept shifting around the room, his feet shuffling on the carpet. He was debating with himself whether or not to explain this to her.

"Doctor?" she prompted.

"Amelia, I… I don't like to think about her. It _hurts_. Just… leave me be, for now."

"Yeah, and that means I'm never getting an explanation then, right?"

He looked stunned that she'd called him on that so quickly. "_No_, I would _never_—" he started, trying to brush it off.

"Doctor!"

"Alright, fine. Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes. Bring Rory, if you must." Then he strode past her out of the room.

**Reviews make me happy and happiness is conducive to the writing process. *hinthint***


	5. Amy and Rory (3)

**Wow, it has been a while... I am so sorry that I haven't updated this in so long, I've just been really busy. And I try to rotate through things that haven't been updated, so that I don't leave anything too long. So... Anyways, this is the third part of Amy and Rory. There should only be one more for them, and I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing for Clara yet.**

**I'd like to add that I will not be adding Twelve to this story. I feel like I could not possibly write for such a complicated character, and I don't feel that the ideas I'm having for Clara would fit for anyone but Eleven. :/**

**And without further ado...**

Amy walked quickly down the corridors, wanting to get back to the library—or wherever it was Rory might be, she trusted the TARDIS would lead her there—as quickly as possible, but giving her legs and lungs a break from her sprint around the TARDIS. She mulled over what the Doctor had said, wondering who this girl had been to him. While she felt bad dredging up old memories, she _needed_ to know: after all, he had a… well, some sort of relationship with that woman River Song, and Amy had felt the inexplainable need to protect her from the moment they had met. And as far as she could tell, he felt far more for this mysterious blonde than he had felt for the slightly less mysterious one.

And, even if that wasn't a very good reason, she was the Doctor's _best friend_! Shouldn't she be trying to help him move on from this? Or at least be a shoulder to lean on?

She eventually reached the console room, where she saw Rory walking in from another hall. She looked at him for a moment, before he said, "I went after you, but I got turned around at some point. Figured the TARDIS would get me somewhere useful eventually."

"I almost lost him. He threw a literal wall up behind himself, the idiot. Lucky for me, the TARDIS stepped in. Moved the room and cracked the door for me. I convinced him to talk to us, so he's waiting in the kitchen."

Rory blinked a few times as she turned towards the hallway that lead to the TARDIS kitchen, but he quickly stepped around her and stood in her tracks, placing his hands on her shoulders. His mouth fell open and shut several times, as he struggled to find the proper words.

After a few seconds of this, Amy cocked her head at him. After a few more seconds of her husband's flabbergasted silence, she brought her hands up to his face and said slowly, "Rory? Are you still in there?"

"Yeah, I'm—I just… He agreed _to talk_? The _Doctor_ is going to have an actual _sit_-_down_ with us?"

She nodded, a huge grin creeping onto her face. Rory shook his head in disbelief. She grabbed his hands and turned him around. "Let's stop talking about how weird it is and actually go find out what's going on!"

He laughed lightly, and they both jogged down the hall, their footsteps echoing on the metal flooring. When they reached the doorway, they could smell the Doctor's favorite tea—some weird banana-esque flavor from a planet he had visited before they started traveling with him, a tea that he only drank on the most special of occasions, because he only had so much and apparently had no plans to return to the planet where it was made—brewing, and they could see him digging through a cupboard they had never noticed before for a mug. They angled towards the bar on one end of the counter, and he met them with his mug of tea as they sat down.

Amy wriggled a little to get comfortable, and then leaned forward on her elbows, her chin resting on her palms. "So Doctor…"

The Doctor, who had remained standing on the opposite side of the bar, tapped his fingers nervously on the side of the mug. Minutes later, he was still just standing there, shifting around anxiously, probably focused more on finding a way out of the conversation than actually starting it. Amy lost her patience, and decided he needed a more specific prompting.

"Can you _at least_ tell me what her name was?"

He stilled then, and his eyes slowly moved to meet hers. They stared at each other for a moment, and she watched as his eyes developed a thin sheen. He smiled sort of sadly, and said in one of his quietest voices, "Rose. Her name was Rose."


	6. Amy and Rory (4)

**AN: Hey. Again, it has been quite a while... I knew that I wouldn't be able to update during April because of how crazy school was, but I publicly promised to have something up on May 7. Unfortunately, May turned out to be pretty crazy school wise as well. I'm out for summer now, though! I made it through freshman year of college. :)  
Unfortunately, I have decided that I won't be writing a section for Clara. My original plan was to have three chapters, one for "Hide", one for "Journey to the Center of the TARDIS", and one for when she's split apart in the Doctor's time-stream. However, being present in his time-stream means she would find out who Rose was, and before that the Doctor didn't really trust her, so I don't think he would have shared. So, now chapters for Clara.  
On the bright side, this is my first officially finished multi-chapter fic, and I've had another Doctor Who story in the works for a while, so I'll have that up eventually. It's been a great ride, see you all in my next fic!**

"Ok. _Rose_," Amy said, not sure where to go next. She was nodding, trying to think of something—_anything_—to say, when her husband decided to ask the most obvious question.

"And she travelled with you?"

The Doctor's eyes flicked from hers to Rory's, then down to his mug. "Yeah… Something like two years, but you know how funny time gets when you're on board…"

"So it could've been quite a bit longer, huh?" Amy asked. The Doctor's focus stayed on his cup; she thought he might've given a very slight nod but she wasn't very sure. She looked over at Rory, who met her gaze before clearing his throat and continuing.

"So, tell us how you met."

The Doctor took a deep breath, and then dived into the story.

"I was in London, tracking the Nestene Consciousness—" he glanced up when Rory shuddered—"'cause it was planning on using shop window dummies to take over the world. Rose, she worked at Henrik's, and was in the basement looking for the electrician for some reason or another… Wandering all about looking for the old man, and she didn't know that he was dead—" he didn't even slow down despite Amy gasping and Rory beginning to ask a question—"and that I was just about to stop them. They all activated ahead of schedule when she walked in… I saved her, got her out of the building, and told her to go home. So she did, but I ran into her the next morning while I was out looking for the arm of one of the dummies—I'd pulled it off, so it hadn't been destroyed when I blew the others up, and she must have taken it to her flat before throwing it out. Got caught up chasing after them all, kept bumping into her the whole while, and after everything was taken care of, I asked her to come with me," the Doctor finished, and took a long sip of his tea, before settling back into his moody silence.

Amy glanced at her husband yet again, once more stuck searching for the words. She broke her gaze from Rory to see the Doctor hadn't moved in the slightest over the last few moments. She ducked her head slightly to catch his eyes with hers, and then asked, "And why was she so special?"

The Doctor shuddered a bit, almost jerking away from her, before he realized the tone hadn't been ironic or condescending in the least. He blinked a few times before actually meeting her eyes, and then he said, "Because she never once left me."

And then he smiled.


End file.
